Judge: Pentagon punished Anthropic for 'arrogance,' and that's illegal

A federal judge has sided with Anthropic in its fight with the Pentagon, saying the government crossed a legal line when it branded the AI company a supply chain risk after a public clash over military use of AI.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued the ruling Thursday night and said the Pentagon’s move was driven by a wish to make a spectacle of Anthropic’s “arrogance,” not by any concrete reason to think the company would sabotage its model. She also said the law the government cited does not let it impose sweeping penalties mainly because a company criticized the administration’s AI views.

The fight started in February, when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of threatening national security. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei pushed back, warning about uses like mass surveillance and autonomous armed drones. The company then sued in March, calling the designation an unlawful retaliation campaign over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

Anthropic said it welcomed the ruling and still wants to work with the government on national security uses of AI. The White House did not immediately comment. The government is expected to appeal, and Anthropic still has a separate case pending in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. over a different Pentagon rule used to try to classify the company as a supply chain risk.

The case has become a very public test of where AI ends and weapons policy begins. That matters because the government’s own lawyers argued the models are so large and opaque that they can’t be treated like ordinary hardware, while Anthropic said the whole episode risked chilling speech about a major public issue.